


learned the truth too late

by chameleonchanging



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Beauty and the Beast, M/M, Whumptober 2020, they look so pretty when they bleed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:00:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27183485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chameleonchanging/pseuds/chameleonchanging
Summary: Plo made a bargain to save his child. Wolffe didn’t know what he was asking for. Now he gets to live with having his wish come true.What happens afterif i could, if Wolffe had a little less foresight.
Relationships: Plo Koon/CC-3636 | Wolffe
Kudos: 42





	learned the truth too late

Plo sleeps on a plush mattress, surrounded by pillows and lovely quilts embroidered with silver thread that match his eyes. His skin is ashen, almost waxy, paper-thin in his poor health. Little pinpricks dot his arms, left bare but tucked under the covers so he doesn’t waste what little energy he has on shivering. He looks nothing like the hunter who’d traded away his own life for help in saving his child’s. If it had been this pitiful creature who’d come to him that day, Wolffe would have refused to hear him. 

He’s ruined his own plaything. There’s something to reflect on. 

He looks on Plo anyway and feels something he might once have labeled obligation. It has its claws in his chest. His heart lurches under its pull when Plo shifts and blinks awake, his breathing picking up to near hyperventilation, his pulse fluttering away as it has every moment for these last few weeks. His mind is too hazy for fear. He looks up at Wolffe and extends an arm for him, and Wolffe settles on the edge of the bed, sitting him up and tucking him back in, taking a glass of juice from the nightstand and holding it to his lips to drink from, watching keenly until every drop has vanished. Then toast, heavily buttered, and egg smothered in rich sauce, and a bowl of that sugar-loaded cereal Wolffe had found a receipt for in Plo’s bag drowned in whole milk and as much cream as he thought he could smuggle in without Plo noticing. 

(The cereal was for Ahsoka. Plo nearly breaks into tears when he sees the box.)

Plo eats obediently, as many bites as he can manage before his nausea threatens to overwhelm him, and then he drifts off again. His head lolls to the side, his breathing slows almost to normal, and his heart continues racing on. Wolffe arranges him into a more comfortable position. 

“I did this to you,” he mumbles, watching the rise and fall of his chest. 

* * *

Plo retired from hunting after his first life-threatening injury, not so much because of fear but because of an unfortunate quirk of his biology: he was nearly impossible to match blood for. When he woke up after emergency surgery, he’d been told that there were only a handful of people in the world he could receive blood from, and that he’d nearly died from the combination of injury and transfusion reaction. Plo took the hint and found a less damaging career. He would never have looked back if it weren’t for a chance encounter with sharp teeth and a very nice coat. 

He tells Wolffe all of this afterwards, when he’s already ailing. No one could accuse him of going back on his word. It’s one of the last glimpses Wolffe has of his hunter before fatigue and illness overwhelms him. He’s lost too much blood. One single person was never supposed to be a vampire’s sole source of food. First he cut back on feeding and then he stopped entirely, and when Plo still spent the days lethargic and dim Wolffe has to admit to himself it was never about the way Plo tasted or smelled but his even personality and unbreakable determination, and how he could eviscerate Wolffe with only a few words. Plo has a thrall all his own, and Wolffe was up to his eyeballs in it before he noticed. 

He’s been raiding the local hospitals for medication, but none of them have the right one. It’s supposed to help Plo make more blood faster. It’s the only option other than waiting the weeks and months for Plo to heal on his own, and Wolffe doesn’t think he can stand it. Coaxing Plo to eat and watching him shiver and slowly going mad - no. He can’t do it. He can’t. He won’t. 

When Plo wakes again, Wolffe is hovering over him, running his thumbs over his glass-sharp cheekbones. He offers an arm, and Wolffe shakes his head. 

“I’m going to save you,” he vows, staring into Plo’s eyes. 

“Everything doesn’t need saving,” Plo says. “Some things just need a little time.” 

He chews slowly on a section of orange when Wolffe offers it and manages to drink most of the soup before he starts to nod off again. He’s all skin and bones, like some starving waif. This is what people look like before they exsanguinate. It doesn’t matter what Plo thinks; time can’t fix him. Only action can.

Wolffe steels his resolve. The girl’s name was Lissarkh, was it?

* * *

Plo wakes in a hospital bed. Bultar is on call and can’t be with him, but Lissarkh and Ahsoka are sleeping on the fold-out in the corner. He’s still waiting. Even medicine takes time. 

He thinks he’s imagining the flicker of movement by his window. It would be more convincing if it didn’t happen every night. Flickers and ghosts don’t leave notes behind. 

He runs his fingertips over the letters, as tangled as their writer.  _ I guess I didn’t know what I wanted. _

He folds the note and tucks it away. 


End file.
